Vitality send Falcons to the Spring Showdown

Vitality are now set to rematch Astralis for a spot in the Spring Finals.

Falcons came into a tough match-up in the second round of the lower bracket at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, with Vitality as their rivals. Sent down by Astralis in the first match after a disappoiting showing, Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer and his men then made it past one of the big underdogs, OG, to stay alive.

Playing an elimination match against Vitality, the team that defined success at the end of 2023, was perhaps their biggest test to date, and Falcons can now say they showed a competitive albeit limited performance as they put up a fight before being sent to the Showdown.

The bout's headlines were all about former teammate Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif and coach Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen facing Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire and company. "Usually I don’t mind jinxing, but apEX doesn’t allow me to," Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi joked before the series kicked off. "But no, I don’t think they’re at a level to compete against us consistently.

"I don’t think they have any knowledge that can help them in the game," the Israeli star continued. "Also, it’s CS2. We played together in CS:GO, so it’s been a while and I think we’re a different team now. They don’t know flameZ that well, they never met mezii, they don’t know the coach… So yeah, they know the core of me, ZywOo and apEX, but I don’t think it can help them in any way."

It wasn't as straightforward as Spinx may have hoped, however, as Magisk put on a fantastic performance with a 1.59 rating in one of the most exciting maps seen so far at the tournament. The duel on Nuke, which also featured an intense battle between Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García, reminiscent of previous encounters, went the way of Falcons in double overtime.

Magisk chose violence with dualies to kick off the second map, dropping three players in the first round of Vertigo to keep his team in the driver's seat early on, but with guns in play Vitality showed their superiority on their pick and came back from an 0-4 deficit to a 7-5 lead. A superb 1.85-rated map by ZywOo carried his team to victory, 13-9, to send the series to the decider. The star AWPer's 124 ADR was double that of the next Vitality player.

Anubis proved to be a bit much for Snappi and his men, who put up six rounds on the attack but were then overwhelmed on the defense. A team effort with William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman at the helm put an end to Falcons, who despite losing showed their talons after not leaving much of an impression against Astralis in the opener.

"We can be really happy with the result. Of course, we would have preferred to win, but that’s how it is sometimes. We'll get them next time," Magisk said in a post-match interview.

"Being together as a team is easier because we can talk about the mistakes, the philosophy we want to play as a team, and I think that’s very important for our progress. You can see from the Astralis game to the OG game that we fixed a lot of things and improved a lot on certain areas of the map, and today we almost beat the best team in the world."

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024
27/01/2024	Astralis 12:00 Vitality	Match
23/01/2024	Vitality Finished 1:2 Astralis	Match

Vitality will now match up against the so far undefeated Astralis in a grudge match from the upper bracket final. On that day, after trading maps, the Danes proved far superior on the Overpass decider, winning it 13-4. This time around, the winner will seal their passage to the Spring Final, while the loser will have to play the second seed from another group in the play-in to earn the honor.